I am a Burmese exile taking a near-permanent refuge in New York and Sydney. Here are my essays about Burma and anything else I feel like writing about. And posting the articles I like from selected sites. Bridging Burma to the world this Blog is more of a Politically-Oriented Literary Blog than a Plain News Blog or a Sophisticated Thoughts Blog.

Thursday, February 25, 2016

Bill to Label CAIR, Brotherhood As
Terror Org. Passes Committee. The House heard how the activities of the
Brotherhood constitute acts of terrorism under the Immigration and Nationality
Act.

A Congressional bill to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist
organization passed the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday, February 25. The
bill identifies three Brotherhood entities in the U.S. including the Council on
American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

The Muslim Brotherhood is not currently
banned in the U.S. because it is not listed as a Foreign Terrorist
Organization. Hamas, its Palestinian wing is designated as a terror group, but
the group a whole is allowed to operate freely in the U.S.

The legislation reviews the
Brotherhood's terrorist history and how it has been banned by the governments
of Egypt, Russia, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Syria.
Egypt has released videos showing the Brotherhood's involvement in terrorism
and the Egyptian government's website warns about the Brotherhood lobby in the
United States.

Monday, February 22, 2016

A new estimate of the U.S. Muslim
population. Total American Muslim population share projected to grow. Pew
Research Center estimates that there were about 3.3 million Muslims of all ages
living in the United States in 2015. This means that Muslims made up about 1%
of the total U.S. population (about 322 million people in 2015), and we
estimate that that share will double by 2050.

Our new estimate of Muslims and other
faiths is based on a demographic projection that models growth in the American
Muslim population since our 2011 estimate and includes both adults and
children. The projection uses data on age, fertility, mortality, migration and
religious switching drawn from multiple sources, including the 2011 survey of
Muslim Americans.

According to our current estimate,
there are fewer Muslims of all ages in the U.S. than there are Jews by religion
(5.7 million) but more than there are Hindus (2.1 million) and many more than
there are Sikhs.

Saturday, February 20, 2016

WASHINGTON -- Donald Trump comfortably
defeated his Republican presidential rivals on Saturday in South Carolina's GOP
primary. Trump's resounding victory isn’t simply a boon to his prospects for
winning the Republican presidential nomination, an outcome once thought
impossible that is looking increasingly more plausible.

It is also an embarrassing repudiation of conservative orthodoxy that
has dominated Republican politics for decades. It suggests that the party's
intellectual leaders, who organized the base around the National Review/Weekly
Standard consensus -- small government, free trade, pro-Israel, deregulation,
low taxes, social conservatism and an aggressive foreign policy -- have been
generals of a phantom army.

The troops, instead, are marching with
Trump, who bested his rivals in South Carolina by campaigning against nearly
everything the Bush family, the Republican Party and neoconservatives who
supported military interventions advocated for.

Friday, February 19, 2016

Donald Trump is now embroiled in a holy
war with Pope Francis over immigration. The pontiff, ending a trip to Mexico,
told reporters Thursday that anyone advocating building a wall — as Trump has
between Mexico and the US — is “not Christian.”

Trump responded swiftly, issuing a
signed statement slamming the leader of the world’s Catholics as “disgraceful”
for questioning his religion. Francis was asked by a reporter flying back with
him from Mexcio, “Can a good Catholic vote for this man [Trump]?”

The pope responded: “Thank God he said
I was a politician, because Aristotle defined the human person as ‘animal
politicus.’ So at least I am a human person. As to whether I am a pawn — well,
maybe, I don’t know. I’ll leave that up to your judgment and that of the
people.

“And then, a person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they
may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian. This is not in the gospel.
As far as what you said about whether I would advise to vote or not to vote, I
am not going to get involved in that. I say only that this man is not Christian
if he said things like that. We must see if he said things in that way and in
this I give the benefit of the doubt.”

Thursday, February 18, 2016

Nike cuts ties with Manny Pacquiao
after derogatory homophobic comments. Nike terminated its endorsement contract
with boxer Manny Pacquiao on Wednesday after he made derogatory remarks about
same-sex couples.

"We find Manny Pacquiao's comments
abhorrent," the company said in a statement. "Nike strongly opposes
discrimination of any kind and has a long history of supporting and standing up
for the rights of the LGBT community." Based on Pacquiao's comments, a
spokesman confirmed that he is no longer on the company's endorsement roster.
Pacquiao, 37, had endorsed Nike for a little more than eight years.

On Thursday, Pacquiao said he respects
Nike's decision to drop him but stood pat on his opposition to same-sex
marriage and added that he is happy that "a lot of people were alarmed by
the truth." Pacquiao's original remarks were made to a Filipino television
station earlier this week

"Have you seen any animal having male-to-male or female-to-female
relations?" Pacquiao said. "If you have male-to-male or
female-to-female [relationships], then people are worse than animals."

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Conspiracy theories swirl around the
death of Justice Antonin Scalia. The top elected official in the Texas county
where Antonin Scalia was found dead says the U.S. Supreme Court Justice died of
natural causes.

But two days after Supreme Court
Justice Antonin Scalia died suddenly in remote West Texas, a former D.C.
homicide commander is raising questions about how the death was handled by
local and federal authorities.

“As a former homicide commander, I am
stunned that no autopsy was ordered for Justice Scalia,” William O. Ritchie,
former head of criminal investigations for D.C. police, wrote in a post on
Facebook on Sunday.

Scalia was found dead in his room at a luxury hunting resort in the
state’s Big Bend region by the resort’s owner. It took hours for authorities to
find a justice of the peace. When they did, Presidio County Judge Cinderela
Guevara pronounced Scalia dead of natural causes without seeing the body —
which is permissible under Texas law — and without ordering an autopsy.

Monday, February 15, 2016

When Tom Wainwright became the Mexico
correspondent for The Economist in 2010, he found himself covering the
country's biggest businesses, including the tequila trade, the oil industry and
the commerce of illegal drugs.

"I found that one week I'd be writing about the car business and
the next week I'd be writing about the drugs business," Wainwright tells
Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "I gradually came to see that the two actually
were perhaps more similar than people normally recognize."

During the three years he spent in
Mexico and Central and South America, Wainwright discovered that the cartels
that control the region's drug trade use business models that are surprisingly
similar to those of big-box stores and franchises. For instance, they have
exclusive relationships with their "suppliers" (the farmers who grow
the coca plants) that allow the cartels to keep the price of cocaine stable
even when crop production is disrupted.

"The theory is that the cartels in
the area have what economists call a 'monopsony,' [which is] like a monopoly on
buying in the area," Wainwright says. "This rang a bell with me
because it's something that people very often say about Wal-Mart."

Sunday, February 14, 2016

The first 10 amendments to the
Constitution make up the Bill of Rights. Written by James Madison in response
to calls from several states for greater constitutional protection for
individual liberties, the Bill of Rights lists specific prohibitions on governmental
power. The Virginia Declaration of Rights, written by George Mason, strongly
influenced Madison.

One of the many points of contention
between Federalists and Anti-Federalists was the Constitution’s lack of a bill
of rights that would place specific limits on government power. Federalists
argued that the Constitution did not need a bill of rights, because the people
and the states kept any powers not given to the federal government.
Anti-Federalists held that a bill of rights was necessary to safeguard
individual liberty.

Madison, then a member of the U.S.
House of Representatives, went through the Constitution itself, making changes
where he thought most appropriate. But several Representatives, led by Roger
Sherman, objected that Congress had no authority to change the wording of the
Constitution itself. Therefore, Madison’s changes were presented as a list of
amendments that would follow Article VII.

Saturday, February 13, 2016

After National League for Democracy (NLD) has
confirmed the speakers and deputy speakers of the upcoming parliaments today,
questions have been raising regarding with the deputy speaker of the Lower
House T Khun Myat relating with the drug issue.

The NLD chairperson Aung San Suu Kyi selected Win Myint as the Lower
House Speaker, T Khun Myat as Deputy Lower House Speaker, Mann Win Khaing Than
as the Upper House Speaker and Aye Thar Aung as Deputy Upper House Speaker,
according to Win Htein, the central executive committee member of the NLD.

Suu Kyi confirmed that when she met
with the NLD representatives in Zabbuthiri Hall located in parliament compound
this morning. Win Myint and Mann Win Khaing Than are from the NLD and T Khun
Myat is from the Union Solidarity and Development Party and Aye Thar Aung is
from Arakan National Party.

Thursday, February 11, 2016

Progressives apotheosized the
dictatorship of the majority. Now they finally have reason to fear it. In The
Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, Karl Marx famously blamed the French
bourgeoisie for the dictatorship of Louis-Napoleon. The dictatorship “was
contained in a finished state within the parliamentary republic,” wrote Marx.
“It only required a bayonet thrust for the bubble to burst and the monster to
spring forth before our eyes.”

Marx was right about some things, and that was one of them. It’s a
lesson progressives should keep in mind as they behold the rise of Donald
Trump. An American dictatorship is now a realistic possibility, because 80
years of progressive politics have left us with its vital elements fully
contained within our system of government.

Since the administrations of Woodrow
Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt, progressive presidents have been loosening
the Constitution’s constraints on executive power, Obama most of all. We could
soon find that the only things standing between us and the bubble’s bursting
are the forbearance and wisdom of Donald Trump.

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Obama ignores evidence of Baltimore
Mosque’s ties to terror and paid presidential visit for center that condoned
suicide bombing. There are now 3,186 mosques in America and nearly 80 percent
of them have been opened since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

President Obama ignored evidence from law enforcement warning him that
the Baltimore mosque he plans to visit as a gesture of religious tolerance has
a long history of ties to terrorism, according to the Investigative Project on
Terrorism (IPT). The mosque’s leaders, who will host the president on
Wednesday, have also made outrageous
anti-Israel statements.

IPT founder and executive director Steve
Emerson told WND his organization was told by FBI sources that Obama was
presented the evidence against the Islamic Society of Baltimore. According to
Emerson’s investigation, federal law enforcement officials told him they were
asked about whether the Baltimore mosque had engaged in radical politics or was
connected in any way to terrorism in the past. “They prepared memos for the
president’s aides that specifically laid out the sordid history and nexus to
terrorism of the Islamic Society of Baltimore,” Emerson told WND.

Numbers Shows Obama Admin has
Institutional Bias Against Syrian Christians. In Syria 10 percent of the
population is Christian yet only 2.4 percent of the refugees entering the US
from Syria are Christian.

Clearly the Obama administration has bias against the persecuted
Christians from Syria. Yet there is an active genocide of Christians in Syria. Jihadists
in Syria have “graduated” from murdering Christians and pillaging churches to
offering Christians as a human sacrifice to Allah.

President Obama made headlines today in
reaction to a question from the press regarding the possibility of taking in
Syrian Christian and other religious minorities ahead or in place of Syrian
Muslims (Syria is majority Sunni Muslim nation.) The President responded
aggressively claiming such a policy was, “… not American. That’s not who we
are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion.”

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Top German Journalist Admits Live On
Air National News Agenda Set By Government. A retired media boss at a major
German state broadcaster has admitted his network and others take orders from
the government on what — and what not — to report.

National public service broadcaster Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF),
which was recently forced into a humiliating apology for their silence on
migrant violence and sex assault is being drawn into a fresh scandal after one
of their former bureau chiefs admitted the company takes orders from the
government on what it reports. He said journalists received instructions to
write news that would be “to Ms. Merkel’s liking”.

Former head of ZDF Bonn Dr. Wolfgang
Herles make the remarks during a radio event (from minute 27) in Berlin where
journalists discussed the media landscape. Moving on to the freedom of the
press, the panel chair asked Dr. Herles whether things in Germany had got
“seriously out of whack”. With an honesty perhaps unusual in Germany, Dr.
Herles replied that ordinary Germans were totally losing faith in the media,
something he called a “scandal”. He said:

Monday, February 1, 2016

The remains of an estimated
1,000-year-old temple and city have been found in Munshiganj District’s
Bikrampur, one of the oldest archaeological sites in Bangladesh. The Bikrampur
temple, estimated to be 1,000 years old found in Bangladesh had links to
venerated ancient Buddhist scholar.

According to The Daily Star , an ancient Buddhist temple featuring
unique architectural elements has been discovered 23 feet (seven meters)
beneath the ground. Buddhist history sites the grounds as where Atish Dipankar
(980-1053) is thought to have spent his early life. Dipankar is known as a
venerated Buddhist scholar and philosopher born over a thousand years ago.

The Daily Star reports that archaeology
professor Sufi Mustafizur Rahman of Jahangirnagar University, and research
director of the project spoke at a press conference about the temple and
excavation project.

Washington: About 24,000 'madrassas' in
Pakistan are funded by Saudi Arabia which has unleashed a "tsunami of
money" to "export intolerance", a top American senator has said
adding that the US needs to end its effective acquiescence to the Saudi
sponsorship of radical Islamism. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) said Pakistan is the best example
of where money coming from Saudi Arabia is funnelled to religious schools that
nurture hatred and terrorism.

"In 1956, there were 244 madrassas in
Pakistan. Today, there are 24,000. These schools are multiplying all over the
globe. These schools, by and large, don't teach violence. They aren't the minor
leagues for al-Qaeda or ISIS. But they do teach a version of Islam that leads
very nicely into anti-Shia, anti-Western militancy. Those 24,000 religious schools in
Pakistan thousands of them are funded with money that originates in Saudi
Arabia," Murphy said in an address yesterday to the Council on Foreign
Relations, a top American think-tank.

According to some estimates, since the 1960s, the Saudis have funnelled
over USD 100 billion into funding schools and mosques all over the world with
the mission of spreading puritanical Wahhabi Islam. As a point of comparison,
researchers estimate that the former Soviet Union spent about USD 7 billion
exporting its communist ideology from 1920-1991.

"Less-well-funded governments and
other strains of Islam can hardly keep up with the tsunami of money behind this
export of intolerance," Murphy said. "The uncomfortable truth is for
all the positive aspects of our alliance with Saudi Arabia, there is another
side to Saudi Arabia that we can no longer afford to ignore as our fight
against Islamic extremism becomes more focused and more complicated," he
said.